


if this isn't the kingdom then i don't know what is

by restlesslikeme



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Phil reads. He reads and the words come easier than he thought they would, slipping softly past his lips with what he hopes is the kind of cadence that Clint is looking for, the kind of sound Clint will appreciate, but they aren’t the lines he wants to say. They’re not the ones he’s already underlined, very lightly, in pencil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if this isn't the kingdom then i don't know what is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barelyjoyous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelyjoyous/gifts).



> my love letter to siken's poetry, to boys with bloody knuckles and agents with lonely routines. that being said, none of the poetry included in this was written by me.

Phil goes to pick him up himself. The kid’s file says he’s seventeen, just seventeen and already has a rap sheet three pages long. Some of the other guys are a little rougher, especially when dealing with someone like this, so he puts his name in, and he gets a call the next day telling him when to catch the jet.

Clint Barton has half his face smashed up, a couple of his bones broken. Phil finds him in a rundown apartment.

“Dunno who you are,” Clint says, squinting up at Phil from where he’s slumped against the couch. “But it looks like someone else got here first, huh?”

Phil gets the feeling that if it came down to it, this kid would still be finding a way to get up and hold his own if he needed to.

“I’m Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D.” he says. “I work for the government and I’m here to offer you a job in exchange for a clean slate.”

Clint grins up at him from the floor, quick and sharp, with a little bit of blood in the cracks in his teeth.

Phil likes him.

 

\--

 

Clint wears jeans with holes in them that fall off his hips, and shirts that are too loose in the chest still but tight around the arms emblazoned with band names that Phil hasn’t ever heard of. His hair sticks up in spikes as though he hasn’t brushed it in weeks, and Phil thinks he’s young. Phil thinks that he’s young and beautiful and bright, and Phil is twenty-seven but it seems like an eternity between him and this hard edged boy with his sharp aim and sharp tongue and sharp eyes.

Phil is twenty-seven and he knows that he is too old for this kind of an infatuation. He knows a lot of things, though, and that’s never stopped him from believing in anything.

 

\--

 

Barton gets put through training. Every handler that works with him writes down that he’s “difficult to work with, unable to take direction, has authority issues”, but he really is the world’s best shot, so Fury begrudgingly keeps him on.

Phil watches from a distance, thinking the whole time that maybe it isn’t Clint that’s the problem, maybe it’s everyone else.

 

\--

 

They’re in Syria, in the middle of a civil war and Phil is on the ground, him and Hill and Clint’s handler, Bryant, and they’re waiting for a shot that isn’t coming.

“Target’s clear,” Hill is saying, glancing between Coulson and Agent Bryant in the way that means she’s serious and someone better do something _now_. “He could have taken the shot thirty seconds ago what’s he waiting for?”

There’s gunfire somewhere too close, their cover could be blown any second, and Bryant just keeps _barking_ into the comm, into what Coulson knows is Clint’s ear, and if he doesn’t fix this soon he’s going to put a gun to his own head to make it stop pounding.

“Enough,” he snaps, pushing the button on his handset that will silence everyone else’s lines, give him direct access to Clint, and turning the corner so that he won’t be heard.

“Talk to me, Barton.”

He’s met with silence, and for a second he thinks he must have cut Clint’s line off too, and then.

“Sir?”

If Phil knew any better, he’d say it was tentative. Instead he goes with wary.

“Talk to me,” he says again, simply, knowing all the while that Clint isn’t his charge, that this kind of behaviour’s probably going to have him filling out a lot of paperwork later.

“We have the wrong guy as our mark,” Clint says finally, his voice crackling over the comm. “Someone else is pulling the strings. He’s just as much a hostage as everyone else in that room.”

“He’s holding a machine gun,” Phil feels compelled to point out, being careful to watch his tone.

“His hands are bound to it.” Clint replies. “I’m not shooting a hostage.”

Phil doesn’t bother asking how Clint can see that from his position, remembering what the junior agents call him, and instead takes a second to consider his options.

“Thank you Agent Barton,” he says. “Keep a visual on them but you’re free to stand down and wait for orders.”

“Yes sir.” Clint replies, relief in his voice, and Phil doesn’t think he’s heard him say that to a handler before.

 

\--

 

When Phil sends his people into the building, they find that their former mark is duct taped to his weapon, begging and crying at them not to shoot him in his native language. The real warlord is apprehended trying to cross the border a few miles East of their location.

Clint rides in Phil’s car on the drive from the their drop off point back to base, and Phil buys him a coffee.

 

\--

 

“He says he won’t go out unless he gets you as his handler,” Maria says, her arms crossed over her chest, standing in the middle of Phil’s office as he tries to file several different reports at once. Phil looks up at her, blinking.

“He’s been in the _air ducts_ , Coulson.” her voice sounds strained, and Phil can guess that she’s been getting grief about it from the higher ups.

An hour later, Phil has Clint sitting in a chair in front of his desk. His feet are propped up on some folders, standard-issue black combat boots eschewed for what appear to be hiking shoes. He smacks his gum loudly, arms crossed over his chest, and again all Phil can think of is how his eyes look guarded under the air of nonchalance, how everything from the curve of his back to the line of his forearms is carefully constructed.

Phil pushes back the thought of stealing the gum right out of his mouth, of wrapping his fingers around Clint’s wrists and seeing whether or not he pushes back, and focuses instead on the task at hand.

After fifteen minutes, all handling duties surrounding Agent Clint Barton have been signed over to Phil.

“Looks like you’re the boss now,” Clint says, popping his gum loudly, raising his eyebrows as he shuffles paper back across the desk and into Phil’s hands while he moves to stand.

“Partners, more like,” Phil says.

Clint grins just a little, caught off guard.

 

\--

 

They’re in Dubai, and it’s the middle of some kind of torrential downpour, and the helicopter won’t be able to land and pick them up until it clears. Clint is spread out on the dingy mattress that the owner dragged into the room for them. Every now and again he glances at Phil through the slits of his eyes, not on guard anymore, more just watching. They’ve been working together months at this point, and Phil still feels in over his head.

Sometimes they’ll be driving and he’ll say something and Clint will bark with laughter and Phil will feel lightheaded, just enough to make him momentarily dizzy.

Right now Phil is too tired to dwell on it. Instead he’s got his back against the wall on the opposite bed, a small, dog-eared, plain-jacketed book cradled in one hand, reading. This is familiar; soon Clint will ask him who should keep first watch and Phil will volunteer. They’ll take shifts sleeping or maybe drift off at the same time, given that their mission went off without a hitch.

Phil is just turning the page of his book, listening to the rain beat down on the tin roof and hoping that he wrapped their supplies up tight enough when Clint speaks.

“Will you read to me?”

Phil pauses, falters slightly.

“It’s nothing you would like,” he says dubiously, subconsciously bringing the book closer to himself. He had made a slip jacket for his books specifically to avoid having to talk to anyone about his reading habits years ago, when he was still doing his military service. Mostly it’s seemed to work. Tonight it’s a book of poetry rather than anything practical. Out of nowhere, he’s embarrassed. “The woman at a used book store in Oregon gave it to me.” he says, not lying.  
“I didn’t even pick it myself.”

From the floor, Clint snorts softly.

“It could be a book about the history of parasailing, for all I care,” he says. “Come on, chief. I’m tired and I hate the rain.”

So Phil reads. He reads and the words come easier than he thought they would, slipping softly past his lips with what he hopes is the kind of cadence that Clint is looking for, the kind of sound Clint will appreciate, but they aren’t the lines he wants to say. They’re not the ones he’s already underlined, very lightly, in pencil.

_I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room_  
 _where everyone finally gets what they want._  
 _You said Tell me about your books, your visions made_  
 _of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is_  
 _the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you_  
 _there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar_  
 _cube..._

_We were in the gold room where everyone_  
 _finally gets what they want, so I said What do you_  
 _want, sweetheart? and you said_  
 _Kiss me_

 

\--

 

Clint is now twenty-two. He’s as sharp as ever, has permanently adopted the name the boys at HQ whisper when they refer to him: _Hawkeye_.

Phil is thirty-two. He’s been offered an early retirement three times within the last five years and turned it down every time.

Sometimes Phil looks at him and still sees that boy- seventeen, just a kid, with his ribs broken and a blood specked grin on his face. Most of the time he sees something more than that.

“ _Talk to me, Barton_.”

If there were something to talk about, it would have happened by now. They’re the best team that S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever had.

 

\--

 

In Vegas they move in to take down a child trafficking kingpin in an elaborate plot that involves a few different different identities and a lot of seedy motels.

“I hate the heat,” Clint complains, loosening the tie around his neck and feeling around for the gun strapped to his leg. From his place next to him in the car, Phil rolls his eyes.

“You hate the weather wherever we go,” he points out. “If it cooled down you’d be complaining that a storm was coming.” He thinks he catches Clint smiling, but it could be a trick of the light.

They sit in silence for a while, the dryness pressing in on them. Phil indulges himself just a moment, trusting Clint to keep his watch, and leans back into the seat and closes his eyes with a sigh.

“I keep waiting,” Clint says quietly, and Phil almost misses it.

“What?”

Clint’s quiet again for a moment, then “ _The lawn is drowned, the sky on fire, the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room,_ ” Phil recognizes the words, can picture them in his head. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“I keep waiting,” Clint says, his voice barely more than a whisper now. “I flipped through your book- you never read me the underlined pages, do you?”

Phil is quiet a few more seconds, then says “I read that to you five years ago.”

He knows instantly that it’s the wrong thing. Clint nods, slowly, then looks back out the window.

They spend the rest of the stakeout in silence.

 

\--

 

In St. Petersburg their cover is blown. They’re neck-deep in a Hydra cellblock and Phil watches as their unwilling informant gets a call on his earpiece, watches as the cogs start moving, and before anyone else has had a chance to act he’s kicked the guy’s feet out from underneath him and snapped his neck. When he looks over, Clint is in the middle of trying to hack the security mainframe to get the sirens to stop going off.

“No time,” Phil tells him, and grabs him by the shoulder so they can start running.

The problem with secret underground neo-terrorist operations, Phil has found, is a lack of schematics. There’s a device here somewhere that’s blocking any radar he’s putting out in an attempt to map out an alternate exit, which means that they’re basically relying on gut instinct, here, in finding a way out.

“You have no fucking clue where we’re going, do you?” Clint says next to him, hardly out of breath at all, keeping pace perfectly.

“Doesn’t matter,” Phil says. “I think if we hang a-”

He hears the shuffle of movement, the mechanical sound of a gun being cocked before he sees it. He shoves Clint around a corner into the wall just as he hears the gun go off, knocking Clint’s jaw a little with his elbow as he presses himself full length against him to get away from the spray of bullets coming from what he can see now is some kind of automated defense system coming off the ceiling.

Clint’s body is warm, his breathing harsh and close over the noise of the gunshots a few feet away from them. His lip is bleeding from where Phil elbowed him and-

_Sorry about the blood in your mouth_  
 _I wish it was_  
 _mine._

 

\--

 

In the shower, with hot water scalding his shoulders, his back, Phil begins to wonder if he’ll ever stop thinking in stanzas. He wonders when the last time he finished an assignment with a clear head was.

He thinks about Clint’s “ _I keep waiting_ ” and six years of road trips, six years of eyes bruised shut, six years of tired bloody hands and cheap whiskey and dirty mattresses and dead men.

When he gets out of the shower and gets dressed, his room feels so empty he can hardly breathe.

He grabs his jacket and is out the door before he can give himself a chance to think about it, before he can look at the clock and convince himself out of leaving.

 

\--

 

Clint’s loft is on the other side of town, an opt out of the safe houses they offered him, too shitty for the amount of money Phil knows he makes. The elevator creaks and shudders when he steps into it, and he thinks that this whole place is Clint, from the yellowed buttons to the crumbling brick outside. He closes his eyes, grips the safety bar and waits as the elevator begins to take him up.

Clint’s door was painted white at some point, but it’s peeling now. Phil doesn’t know what it says about him that he wants to smooth his hands over the warped wood, to follow the grooves and scratches with his thumbnail.

He doesn’t. Instead he knocks, a little quiet, half hoping that Clint won’t answer the door but knowing, in the pit of his stomach, that he will, that this is a choice he’s making that he has to face up to, now or never.

“A little late to be making house calls, don’t you think, Chief?”

In the dark, Clint almost looks seventeen again. His hair is flattened down on his head everywhere but the front, as if he’s been running his hands through it, and his tshirt is ripped under the arm. Phil can just barely make out the split in his lip.

“A little,” he agrees quietly.

Clint steps aside to let him in and Phil moves forward. The apartment is drafty, and Phil has been here a few times, but this is the first that he’s noticed all the blankets that Clint owns. There’s two draped over the back of a couch that looks like it was found on a curbside somewhere, at least three more folded neatly on a shelf. He’s not thinking about Clint wrapped in blankets making coffee in the morning. He isn’t.

“What can I help you with, Boss”

Phil can’t remember Clint calling him by name since Vegas.

“You don’t have to call me that,” Phil says. Clint shrugs, walks towards the window.

“Don‘t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

Phil is quiet. He doesn’t touch him, even though he wants to, instead he says, “Why did you come with me that day I picked you up?” Because even after all this time, he still hasn’t figured that part out, still hasn’t been able to deduce why Clint Barton, escape artist extraordinaire, the sharpest shot in the world, this beautiful, violent, wanted boy, came without a fight.

“It was that or the chair, wasn’t it?” Clint muses, still not looking at him, still staring out as if he’s looking at the stars, and maybe he is.

“You could have tried to run,” Phil answers. “You might have got away.”

Clint is quiet. Phil wonders if he’s considering it, running. The thought makes him want to close his eyes and never open them again, makes him want to get down on his knees in front of Clint with his back to the night sky and the stars and the city skyline and beg. He doesn’t.

Clint sighs. “Do you know,” he says, “How many people have ever told me I could be something good?” When Phil doesn ‘t answer him he holds up a finger, turns from the window, his mouth a little crooked.

“I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything,” Phil says.

“I’ve saved your ass too many times for that, by now.”

Clint’s fingers picking shrapnel from his shoulder, Clint’s arrow flying a moment faster than Phil’s own hit could manage, Clint’s hand on his back, holding him up in the back of a helicopter, keeping him steady.

“I think we’re about even, Phil,” Clint says quietly. He holds Phil’s name on his tongue like expensive coffee or bitter chocolate, smooth and wanted and perfect, not dull or un-extraordinary at all. Like something worth having, and Phil’s never had that before at all but he thinks that he likes it, thinks that he’s never wanted to be anywhere else except Clint’s cold, spacious apartment in the middle of the night.

“I don’t want to ruin this,” Phil says. It comes out of his mouth before he knows where it came from. Six years worth of standing up straight only to stumble now. His voice sounds like a crack in the sidewalk. He wants Clint to tell him he’s still waiting but he doesn’t, he just stands by the window, his shoulders slumping.

“I tell you you’re the only person who’s ever made me think I could do something good,” Clint says finally. “I tell you that I’m waiting, that I’ve been waiting for you, and it’s still not enough to make you believe that I won’t ruin it.” He laughs, ragged and wet, and scrubs a hand over his face and turns back to the window.

“ You’re right though, I always ruin it, Phil, I just thought that maybe-”

Clint’s face is warm under his hands, there’s just barely the scratch of a beard there, and suddenly Phil is kissing him. Kissing him and kissing him because God, he’s screwed this up, he’s screwed it up so badly that Clint thinks Phil doesn’t believe he’s good enough for it, Phil made him think that when it’s the opposite, and-

And then Clint is kissing him back and it doesn’t matter anymore at all.

 

\--

 

 

Phil wakes up and the bed smells like cigarettes and like stale laundry detergent and like Clint’s soap. Clint is curled into him, his eyes closed and his head tucked down and in and Phil thinks that this, this could be his forever, that maybe his boy will always be a poem about blood and dirt and sharp eyes, but he’s this too, this soft solid person with a quick smile and a thousand blankets stashed in a thousand places.

Phil gathers him in and presses kisses along his jaw and when Clint wakes up, he’ll take him to coffee.

\--

_“You saved my life he says I owe you everything_  
 _You don’t, I say, you don’t owe me squat,_  
 _let’s just get going, let’s just get_  
 _gone”_  



End file.
